The Twelve Tones Team
Esmerelda Conde Ruiz
ESMERELDA CONDE RUIZ writes contemporary music for orchestras, choral ensembles and film using minimal instrumentation and repeating rhythmical patterns that develop into moving, emotional worlds with a visual component. She uses unusual combinations of instruments, electronics and voices and is curious about sound and ways of developing site-specific performances.
Esmeralda is the recipient of ‘Best Original Score’ at Los AngelesIndependent Film Festival and ‘Award of Excellence for Best Score’ Indie Fest Film Awards for her soundtrack for British short film ‘Cusp’ by Oliver Warren.
Esmeralda is also an interdisciplinary conductor working across the fields of the arts. She has specialised in voice ensembles and sound and is highly experienced in sight-specific projects and large-scale productions. She is a pioneer of choral interdisciplinary projects in the U.K. and has collaborated with contemporary artists, composers, directors and musicians such as Yoko Ono, David Lang, Nils Frahm, Matthew Herbert, Susan Philipsz, CocoRosie, Robert Wilson, Peter Liversidge, Mira Calix and more.
Andy Ingamells
ANDY INGAMELLS is an experimental musician who develops unusual methods of composition that blur the line between composer and performer.
He has filled taxis with recorder players reading traffic lights as notation, played gold-painted pianos overflowing with buckets of red wallpaper paste, invented the game of violin cricket, and been tickled by improvisers playing his ticklish body as a musical instrument.
His work has been performed in the National Portrait Gallery, the Handel & Hendrix House Museum and Café Oto in London, the Orgelpark and Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam, the Lapidarium of Kings in Copenhagen, Walled City Festival in Derry, Birmingham International Dance Festival, and Cheltenham Music Festival.
Andy is also one of our composers.
Our Producers
Simon Duggal
SIMON DUGGAL has produced and written in a variety of genres for artists including Shania Twain, Apache Indian, Swami and Maxi Priest, as well as remixing records for many artists including The Beat, Steel Pulse, Erasure and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
Records produced by Simon have won 2 Grammy Awards and was also nominated for the coveted Ivor Novello award for song writing, in the category of best contemporary song, alongside Take That and M People. Simon also composes music for TV adverts including Pepsi, Intel, Toshiba, Etisalat and others. He has songs featured in Hollywood and Bollywood movies and wrote the music for a BAFTA winning British TV drama.
Sarah Farmer
SARAH FARMER is a Birmingham-based artist and musician mostly working with sound and violins. She is interested in questions of science and technology, and exploring them through the hands-on endeavours of making and sharing through a medium of sound, D.I.Y, found materials, wood and strings and the odd bit of electronics.
Farmer is also interested in site specific and relational work, that involves learning and researching – both receiving and sharing information and working in a way that facilitates learning about our environments, our histories and possible futures, our materials and how we’ve gone about navigating these constant questions.
Bobbie-Jane Gardner
BOBBIE-JANE GARDNER is a composer, pianist, arranger, producer and music leader working in the field of contemporary, electronic and experimental music. Her piano playing skills have seen her perform with an array of bands and ensembles.
Bobbie loves orchestrating, arranging and remixing music, in 2015 she created orchestral arrangements for opera singer Byron Jackson with the Birmingham Sinfonia and a remix of ‘Coco Butter’ by The Fish Police.Bobbie-Jane initiated and produced citywide, ACE-funded music programme for-Wards (2016-18), developing new music acrossBirmingham’s 10 districts.
Annie Mahtani
ANNIE MAHTANI is an electroacoustic composer, sound artist and performer working and living in Birmingham, UK. After completing her doctoral studies in composition in 2008 she has worked as a freelance composer, performer, curator and educator.
Her work encompasses electronic music composition from acousmatic music to free improvisation.Her music explores abstract and recognizable sound worlds and all the spaces in between. With a preoccupation with space, Annie works extensively with multichannel audio both in concert pieces and in live performance.
Annie is a Lecturer in Music at The University of Birmingham. She is co-director of SOUNDkitchen, a Birmingham based collective of curators, producers and performers of live electronic music and sound art.
Pram
Working in the field of alternative pop composers, PRAM are known for their use of unusual sounds including the incorporation of Theremin, toy instruments, other-worldly samples and analogue electronics. Pram craft fairytales from concrete reality, the second city’s spin cycle of perpetual renovation, from the slum clearances to its current cosmetic upgrade, is etched in Pram’s restless groove, an endearing and gently refusenik mix encircling astro jazz, sci-fi soundtracks, creepy Victoriana, tropical analogue and tumbledown funk.
Our Composers
Commissioning Agents – Gavin Wade and Zoë Sawyer, Tim Mills and Jaz Morrison, Eastside Projects
In their role as Commissioning Agents for Birmingham Big Art Project and Station Clock, Eastside Projects lead on the curation and project management of Twelve Tones.
Project Coordinator – Nick Brown
NICK BROWN is a freelance musician, composer and programmer. He performs with his own quartet regularly and writing music for a variety of audiences. Nick is Programme Manager at National Youth Jazz Collective and has previously worked with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (BCMG), Cheltenham Festivals and on Birmingham’s citywide for-Wards project.
Community Arts Consultant – Bobbie-Jane Gardner
Eastside Projects worked with Bobbie-Jane Gardner to collaboratively devise the curatorial framework for the Twelve Tones community engagement programme in response to Susan Philipsz concept for Station Clock.
Project Assistants
Zach Dawson, Brenda Hickin, Millicent James
Projects Team